


Something's Wrong With Will Graham

by Necronon



Series: Nature and Nurture [1]
Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: #justfuckmeup2, Alternate Universe, Anal Sex, Body Horror, Knotting, M/M, Mating Bites, Mating Bond, Mating Cycles/In Heat, Mildly Dubious Consent, Oviposition, Resolved Sexual Tension, Scents & Smells, Weird Biology
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-15
Updated: 2017-06-15
Packaged: 2018-11-14 10:57:24
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,165
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11206659
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Necronon/pseuds/Necronon
Summary: In which Will's empathy is more than a quirk of his biology, and his biology is more than human.





	Something's Wrong With Will Graham

**Author's Note:**

> Written for #JustFuckMeUp. I'm trash. All mistakes are my own.

Will grips the sink and looks into the mirror, a bifurcated crack in the glass fracturing his reflection.

He squeezes his eyes shut. Holds his breath. Opens them.

“ _Goddammit—_ ”

Knuckles white on the lip of the sink as he sucks in another breath. Chest tight.

A tell-tale scrape of claws echos in the hall as a dog trots over to inspect the noise, one brown eye peering quizzically between the frame and the door, twinkling with an intelligence befitting the collie mix. Winston’s always the first to smell it on him. To _know._

They’re still there: Two fibrous pinions peeking out of swollen gum above his lateral incisors, too slim to be mistaken for impacted cuspids. Like the quills of feathers, centers shadowed by a hollow core. There’s a trace amount of fluid seeping from the attenuated tips. It tastes astringent, like the bar of Zest his aunt had shoved into his mouth once upon a time for telling her he wouldn’t eat her gar balls because _they went through him faster than shit through a goose._ His eight-year-old self had found it poignant in a household where the TV was restricted to the local news, spaghetti westerns, and televangelism—topped with a healthy dose of _don’t you touch that remote, boy._

Then there’s the time he’d traumatized Cindy Beaufort from down the road. The only other time he remembers showing outside of a fever. The memory returns to him frame by frame, stop-motion stills behind his eyes. Cindy, stomping and yanking a stuffed beagle from his hands. Will, rounding on her with juvenile fury, teeth bared in a snarl.

Only it hadn’t been the snaggletooth mouth of a child losing his baby teeth.

Then, Cindy dropping the toy and screaming and screaming. Running to his old man. Cindy—ever the product of her devout, widowed mother—wailing about the devil’s mouth. His arm yanked up and almost out of socket, Pa cussing at him in a hodgepodge of French and English as he dragged his son to the bathroom.

_Lemme see, open up—stop that squawking, or I’ll give you something to really cry about._

Will had been more afraid of his father’s look of total abjection than a scolding.

He’ll never forget his face. It marks the point of no return. The slip from normality into isolation. Not _time to tell you about your mother_ different, like maybe it should have been, but home schooling and half-truths about how he was sick and couldn’t come play because he might be contagious. The incident had been isolated, and another didn't happen again for a long time. His only remaining peculiarities had been his frequent and visceral nightmares, and a razor-sharp intuition that paved the way to homicide detective.

That'd been before the shit had really hit the fan, though.

Will leans closer to the mirror and tugs down the lower eyelid of his left eye. His pupils are blown.

His fevers have always been blessedly punctual, and he can’t understand why it’s happening so soon. Every three months, like clockwork. Could even calculate the exact hour they peak and send him reeling. Which is critical, because he always spends a few hours incapacitated or dissociating.

Will recalls Hannibal’s raised brow at the request to turn off the lamp. Had Will been showing, even before he’d left the office? Had Hannibal noticed? Will hadn’t worn his glasses. Is that what the embrace had been about, trying to get a better look? Will can’t think of a lot of other reasons for the affectionate contact, unless it’s a Lithuanian thing.

He is sure of one thing: Hannibal’s to blame. If Will spends too much time in close proximity to him, his biology blows a damn gasket. Hannibal had caught him off guard a few hours ago with a kiss to his forehead, pointedly ignoring the fact that Will’s a (thanks, Bev) _curmudgeon on the cusp of his 40s_. Will’s a bit mortified over how close he’s let this man get to him within such a short span of time. Forehead-kissing close, which is pretty indefinite, but still a degree closer than anyone else.

Winston grumbles and softly woofs at him.

Will looks over his shoulder and says, “What, you too?”

Winston lowers his head into a wary posture and woofs a little louder, disappearing around the corner when Will motions and tells him to “Go on, _GIT._ ”

_Sorry, buddy._

The dogs hate it. They can always sense it. He probably smells funny, too.

Will turns dejectedly from the mirror—he’s not going to stare the things away—and shambles past the kitchen where Willie Dixon’s “Evil” has just started up on the radio. He heads for the makeshift wet bar he’s fashioned out of a folding table by the living room window. Forgets to cancel his next therapy session like he’d said he should as he fills a tumbler with whiskey and acquiesces to nostalgia.

_If you’re a long way from home, can’t sleep at night—_

Forgets the TV dinner cooling in the microwave.

— _grab your telephone. Something just ain’t right._

Tries to forget Hannibal Lecter. Tries not to dream about him. But a lot of good that does.

The second Will’s asleep, he’s slipping his hand along a soft waist, up over solid shoulders—panting into the sensual lines of the nude back beneath him and twisting fingers in soft, silver-blonde. In his dreams, every night for the past week, he fucks Hannibal Lecter.

And there’s no one to blame but himself. No Shrike or Ripper to excuse his base desires. And it scares him, because some primitive corner of his mind wants more than just a metaphysical fuck. A voice in his hind brain is telling him to take, change, devour. To fill the aching void in his person. And he wants to.

God, he wants to.

Will wakes up the next morning with a hoarse cry and a parched mouth. He immediately leans over the side of the chair where he’s fallen asleep and wretches.

 

* * *

 

“Are you feeling unwell,” Hannibal asks.

Will is wringing his damp hands and pacing a wall of book shelves, ripe with the odor of trepidation. It sours the back of Hannibal’s throat.

“Didn’t sleep.” Will removes a book, then replaces it. Continues pacing and tugging at the soggy collar of his shirt. “Just tired.”

Hannibal waits for Will to elaborate, hands resting peaceably atop the arms of his chair as he observes him, rapt. Hannibal’s office is quiet, all but for a moth beating its fat body, _thunk, thunk, thunk,_ against the glass shade of the lamp on his desk. All but for the crackle of dried clay, pestled into the rug by the careless heels of his previous patient, as Will paces.

His eyes track Will’s circuit around his office like a hawk.

Something is different about Will. No, not different—accentuated. A secret just beneath the surface. Hannibal can’t remember the last patient he'd taken on that'd transfixed him with such totality.

Beyond Will’s obvious distress, there’s the anomalous odor that Will is ensconced by, a sort of wild musk beneath his anxiety. The fresh tear at the end of a pant leg of thrice-worn jeans, behind which the additional tang of clotted blood resides. Will’s sensitivity to light, and, chiefly, whether Will’s agitated state only coincidentally precedes the marked date that Hannibal has observed on his lunar calendar—a flimsy print-out shoved into a drawer—whose every third synodic month has its coinciding dark moon annotated with a hasty X in blue ballpoint. The sheaves of ephemerides and astronomical (and astrological) texts besides.

Perhaps Hannibal has simply underestimated the man’s enthusiasm as a hobbyist. Or Will’s fallen victim to conspiracy, which Hannibal very much doubts.

“Jack claims you enjoy fishing,” Hannibal says.

Jack has never mentioned Will’s fishing, but better to let Will think he’s discovered the fact through idle conversation with a mutual. No need to reveal just how closely he’s examined Will’s person and private domicile—the drawers and closets of his mind and bedroom alike.

Will looks haltingly towards but not quite at him. “Since I was a kid.”

“I’ve heard of the magic hour at dawn and dusk. I was not aware, however, the moon played an equally important role. Fascinating.”

Will shoots him a knee-jerk scowl, but quickly recovers. “Nothing magical about it.”

“No fisherman’s superstitions?”

“No. Just suppositions. And years of practice.” Will finally falls into the chair across from Hannibal, drumming his fingers on the leather arm. “Thinking of taking up a new hobby?” he asks, skepticism punctuated by a brief interlocking of eyes before Will looks back towards the windows.

“I would hardly know where to begin.”

“I’d offer to teach you. If you were actually interested. Which you aren’t.”

“Only curious where a troubled mind finds its peace.”

Will tips his chin up and finally looks him squarely in the eyes. “Fish aren’t complicated.”

“Neither are dogs, I imagine.”

Will grimaces and rakes fingers through his beard, the small readjustment wafting more of that pungent odor towards Hannibal. Not at all the standard bouquet of canine and Christmas aftershave. “Can you blame me, considering my day job?”

“Not at all. You fish, I cook—are you alright?”

Will is doubled over, clutching at his abdomen, jaw lined with tension. “Jus-just give me a second.”

“Will...”

Will starts to snap back, voice elevated by pain, but goes completely rigid. He cries out, the outburst withering into a strangled whimper and a beautiful rictus that makes Hannibal ache for a stick of charcoal. He commits the image to memory before rising from his seat, mouth bent into a manufactured line of concern. He’s careful not to let his curiosity play into the mix as he strides over and reaches for Will’s shoulder—but the moment the tips of his fingers graze the threadbare Henley, one of Will’s hands, quick as a snake, snares his wrist, compressing his metacarpals.

“Will.” A warning, only passively tinted with pain. “Let go of my wrist, Will.”

Will is still doubled over, head hanging between his knees. His arm moves as if of its own autonomy, a distinctly unnatural motion. Hannibal feels the icy fingers of dread walk up his spine and over his scalp, because whoever is sitting before him isn’t Will Graham. Not wholly—not the one that Hannibal thinks he might have known.

He discards the name for now and says, “You’re hurting me,” like some idle pleasantry, tone politely requesting that Will _not_ crush his wrist.

Will finally lifts his head, fingers tightening when Hannibal tries to withdraw, and looks up at him, expression lax and ineffable. Will’s pupils have completely eclipsed his iris, Hannibal’s reflection superimposed across the surface.

His veil slips a degree when his hand is yanked closer to Will’s mouth. He’s half expecting the man to bite a chunk out of him like some kind of animal when Will decisively tucks his nose into Hannibal’s palm, a low hum vibrating against the sensitive skin of his wrist, all the way out towards his fingertips.

A guru of olfactory delights himself, he can hardly begrudge Will—if it weren’t his palm, if Will wasn’t holding it effectively captive and shoving his cuff-links down his wrist to lave a tongue across the delicate skin there, now red and irritated with friction burn.

Hannibal draws a clipped breath and curls his fingers into a fist (wary of attempting escape), and sharply says, “ _Stop._ ”

Not just because Will’s nosing is discourteous or an infraction of etiquette, but because Hannibal is not accustomed to having the rug so effortlessly pulled out from under him. No amount of calculating and plotting recourse on his part could have prevented it. He’s not opposed to surprise—only the threat of being snuffed out before he’s had a chance to flay this fascinating new creature open and catalog him. And the flavor... What wine would he pair with? How would you prepare the meat?

It’s almost too much. The cocktail of his fear and anticipation, on top of Will’s own heady bouquet, is edging on sexual. Oh, it has been some time since he’s felt similarly moved.

Felt the violent machinations of his own heart.

He is, in some small but pivotal capacity, afraid of Will Graham. An unexpected development.

Hannibal’s hand shakes slightly as he slips a reciprocal thumb into Will’s mouth and waits to see if the man will bite down.

It all happens very quickly. Will’s eyes focus and he pitches Hannibal’s hand away from him as if it’d burned him, sinking back into the chair with a bewildered look.

“I need to go.”

“Will, wait—”

“Cancel my next appointment. I need—I need to go.” Will climbs out of his chair, trips, and scrambles for the door, almost pulling the coat rack over in his haste to retrieve his scarf. “I’m sorry.”

The door latches behind Will.

Hannibal remains, inspecting his hand and deliberating over paying Will a visit later. What would he find? The prospect makes him smile. He glances up at the lofty ceiling and says, “How very exciting.”

 

* * *

 

He’d been so careful after his first fever, two nauseating Louisiana nights in his early twenties that had come on like a surprise second puberty during June’s new moon. It’d quashed his lingering aspirations to join the FBI in any real capacity, so he’d resolved to teaching and consulting on the side. He’d reinforced his prickly exterior, carefully scheduled any necessary medical exams, and stonewalled anyone from getting too close.

Twelve years, and not one slip up. At least nothing irreparable.

Until now, his impending and too-soon fever hot on his heels as he races to get home.

The drive out of Baltimore is a nightmare, each roadside streetlight and oncoming vehicle manifesting as a searing bolt of pain behind his dilated eyes, washing out his field of vision with a flash of void white. Someone in a Honda with a duct-taped window darts around him, flipping him the bird as they rumble ahead into the dark, taillights two angry, red blossoms of agony.

The ache is so acute that he has to bite his own tongue to keep from cussing. There’s a throbbing tug in his gums that makes his sinuses weep, a vice in his gut, in his groin. An acrid tinge as he licks his lips. Too bright, too loud—too full. He’s delirious with pain and pleasure alike, stretched thin between two extremes and anchored only by an alien weight coalescing in his gut. God, he wants to crawl out of his skin, open up his body, and bleed dry the yearning.

It’s so much worse this time. So much worse since Hannibal. And so much sooner. He’s usually only this indisposed a few hours before his peak, but now he’ll be lucky if he makes it home. Oh god, he has to make it home. If he has to pull over, if someone stops to help, if someone sees him—

No, he’s almost there. Almost.

The relief he feels when he finally turns onto the long gravel road that leads him home is short-lived but immense. His little boat on the sea, a two-story house drifting in a field of scrub. An insular little alcove in a tumultuous world. Most of all, a place decidedly appropriate for concealing secrets.

Will jogs up onto the sprawling porch and shoulders the screen door open as he fumbles with his keys. There’s an excited clamor on the other side as his dogs rush the door: Perplexed yipping and distressed cries that make Will’s heart sink. They don’t understand. Hell, neither does he, not fully.

That morning while filling their bowls Winston had startled and bit his ankle. Someone else had pissed in the corner of the living room.

He hates it. He’s terrified this thing might one day change him beyond recognition. He hates that he has to herd his only friends outside while he endures. Hates that he can’t tell them he’s not going to hurt them—but he can’t even tell himself that. He doesn’t know what happens during the few hours he loses during his fever. And he doesn’t know if he even really wants to know.

Will gets the door open and steps aside, making way for a flood of tails and wet noses. They pile out and bolt into the field, their anxiety immediately ameliorated by the newfound distance from their master. The one that doesn’t belong—the unwanted. The flower out of place. The weed.

Will watches them, frowning. At length he goes inside, locks the door, and starts for the bedroom, a sheen of sweat already pulling his flyaway hairs flat to his forehead and tamping his shirt to his chest and the small of his back.

 

* * *

 

The only thing atypical of the Graham house is the absence of a caretaker. The dogs are milling about unsupervised until Hannibal pulls up. They swarm his legs the minute he steps out of his car, well acquainted with their Other Dad.

The porch and house itself are dark as he approaches. There are no lights on that he can see. He knocks, and when there’s no answer, tries the door. Finding the door locked, he fishes his wallet out of his coat and chooses a sturdy card from its sleeves. It fits easily between the door and the loose frame and releases the lock. Hannibal is scarcely surprised that Will doesn’t bother with the deadbolt. Will’s experienced a lot worse than the honest crook.

The dogs refuse to follow him over the threshold. They stare expectantly at him as he pulls the door closed—and turns the deadbolt.

“Will?”

Still no answer.

Hannibal finds the living room in its standard state of disarray, including a tumbler on the coffee table by a well-used bottle of J&B. The bottle of Johnnie Walker Reserve that Hannibal had given Will sits on a rickety table in front of the window, seal intact. Hannibal clucks his tongue and resists relocating the expensive liquor to somewhere more distinguished. He’ll have to remember to crack the seal himself, if Will’s going to be so modest about it. Perhaps for the best—now he can relish firsthand the man’s indignation over being spoiled so, and being maneuvered into a position to either accept his gift or act discourteously.

If he can find him.

Hannibal calls Will’s name again as he starts down the hall, floorboards complaining under the heels of his brogues. He wants to make himself known. Will responds poorly to surprise.

Hannibal pauses and angles his head.

It’s the softest noise, almost imperceptible: A muffled whimper that could have been the product of pain as much as pleasure. It’s coming from the bedroom. Another nightmare, perhaps. But when Hannibal reaches the doorway, he doesn’t find Will asleep at all.

By now, Hannibal’s eyes have adjusted marginally to the dark, enough that he can see Will turn to face him where he’s writhing on the floor and tangled, evidently naked, in a ratty quilt. The small room is rank with musk, distress, and pre-ejaculate. Hannibal wrinkles his nose and tries the light, but nothing happens. Must have thrown the breaker switches. He thinks better of using his phone’s flash.

“Will,” he says a third time.

Will sits up, head lulling on his neck, shoulders drooping. He’s seen patients in a similar state after being anesthetized by a cocktail of propofal and ketamine.

Hannibal isn’t expecting a response when Will coughs out his name, locks eyes with him, and says, “... _hurts_ _,_ ” without further explanation, voice hoarse as if from shouting.

“Will, tell me what is wrong. Tell me what to do.”

“Hannibal.” Will rolls his shoulders and sits up, peering at him from the sleepy slits of his eyes. The corners of his mouth and chin shine in the dull light from the nearby window, and Hannibal isn’t so sure it’s saliva. “ _Hannibal—help me._ ”

Will sounds so pitiful that if Hannibal were anyone else, he might have immediately swaddled the miserable man in his arms. But where Will’s pleas don’t particularly inspire him, intrigue does.

Hannibal steps closer, not quite within Will’s reach, and kneels. He can feel the heat of Will’s fever radiating from his nude body. Hannibal slides one of his hands out of a glove and reaches for an ankle. He would be no less thrilled by proximity to a wild tiger. The Will before him now is something just as wild and just as dangerous.

“Beautiful,” Hannibal whispers to himself, thumb smoothing over the rise of a well-formed ankle, past a small pink slice of skin that had been an ugly bite just this morning.

It’s more than he could of hoped for, as divine as the devout receiving the Eucharist. An intoxicating peek into a broader universe.

Hannibal’s eyes drift closed as he groans, dizzied. He doesn’t hear the whisper of heels against the floor.

Will sets on him, hard fingers in his back and hair, pulling; Hannibal is certain those supernatural hands are going to close around his throat or eviscerate, his own strength dwarfed by compare. He braces for it like a fly awaiting the spider, caught in the preternatural cage of Will’s arms.

But Will doesn’t compress his ribs until they crack or cinch his throat he closed.

“Will,” Hannibal tries, voice strained as his hair is tugged and he’s forced to look up at the ceiling.

A low rumble, an ugly sound from hell itself, articulated and throaty. Hannibal swallows, Adam’s apple bobbing against a wet mouth.

“Release me. Let me help you.”

A second hand drags down his back. Hannibal can hear and feel chipped nails snag the cotton of his suit. Then something warm, a tongue, up the column of his exposed neck. The bridge of a nose tucked behind his ear and a slow exhale chilling the wet swath of skin below. Then arms, moving, fingers working the top of his coat, battling with his tie, popping open a collar. A hand, gentle, exploratory, smoothing the fabric to the side, exposing collar bone and part of his shoulder with languid bewilderment.

Like even Will isn’t sure what to do with his catch. He apparently decides quickly enough.

Lips drag Hannibal’s neck, kissing, wide-mouthed affections whose wet sucks parody hands groping inside the cavity of a body—Hannibal’s hands plying warm viscera as he searches for a bleeding artery in the back of a stolen ambulance. It’s the obscene sound of relinquished control just before a bolt of mild pain, two bee stings, into his trapezius. A dissipating burn that ebbs into a numb chill. Hannibal shudders as another kind of warmth sprouts elsewhere, making his thoughts buzz. The odor of arousal is suffocating now. Slowly, the tension is leeched from his body until he is ductile in Will’s lap, head braced against Will’s shoulder. The ragged sound of his own breathing is profane, but he can’t get enough air. He sucks down great, shuddering gulps and gasps them out against Will’s muggy collar.

“What did you—” _What did you do. Will._

Will maneuvers his head and aligns their mouths, pressing firmly enough that Hannibal can feel the strange teeth hiding behind Will’s lips. Then Hannibal grunts and opens his mouth, and they kiss. Hands snare his waist as Will’s tongue sweeps across and behind his teeth, making room.

He feels inebriated. His thoughts form too slowly and dissipate too quickly. Will is everywhere, invading all his senses. A roiling counterpoint of flesh and hunger. Something, _something..._

It’s so dark that he doesn’t realize he’s being gentled back until his head bumps the floor and his vertigo disbands. Will takes his place above him, crawling up his body and getting back at his mouth and neck, slithering hips sending erratic tremors though Hannibal’s overwrought body where they connect. Will’s hard and leaking against his slacks, and Hannibal isn’t so different. He’s on fire. Every nerve feels like a plucked chord. His body vibrates, unfurls. A blanketed drum strikes between his ears. Will is a boneless, sinewy thing atop him, impossibly locomotive within the confines of their intimate space as he works himself against Hannibal’s hip and intermittently engages their mouths.

Hannibal scrabbles at the floor when he feels himself start to sink into it, startled when he finds the wood still solid beneath his fingertips. Everything is writhing and moving. He reclines on a bed of snakes, their charmer coiled atop him. Plying him.

Hannibal opens his eyes, searching for visual purchase, something to anchor himself to. Something still and solid, but only finds the two luminous pearls bobbing above him, the coral _t_ _apetum lucidum_ of Will’s eyes redirecting the starlight from the window. Suspended immolation. Was it a hallucination? Not even God knew what toxin was running rampant in his body.

Hannibal’s transfixed, the loosening of his waistband a distant alteration—the cold floor against his naked thighs only pricking at the fringes of his conscious. Unimportant. He feels too loose and overly warm. Revoltingly ductile. He’s going to disappear into the seams of the floor, go back to the earth that way, Will’s weight bearing down on him like a press. Reshaping him. He tries to pull the doors of his mind closed again, but his hand slips on the knob. Will crowds the threshold. Spills in, something black entering with him.

 _No_ , he thinks, but Will’s already there, bent between his thighs. _No. This is dangerous. There is danger._

But he doesn’t say that. Because it isn’t what he wants. It’s not what he _needs_. He’s burning. He’s going to burn up. He’s going to be snuffed out if something doesn’t give.

Hannibal sneers, angry, unreasonably frustrated, and says _,_ “ _Finish what you started.”_ Then says it with his body by opening his legs.

“I can’t s-stop.” Will’s voice, tremulous. “I need to—” Will shudders against him and growls into his neck, just as frustrated. A losing battle. “So good. It’s just so good. I can feel it.”

Hannibal hisses between his teeth and tries to parse the words. They scatter, elusive. He’s regressed to a simpler language: that of the flesh. Something akin to hunger. Hannibal doesn’t realize Will’s slipped a hand between them until he feels the fingers opening him up, lubricated by a viscous fluid of dubious origin. It doesn’t matter. He needs Will, needs—

Hannibal can’t see. One of his legs is still tangled in his slacks and briefs, a single shoe and sock hastily discarded so that Will could shoulder a knee and get between Hannibal’s legs, driven by compulsion.

What are they doing? What is Will doing? What is _Will?_

There’s a sobbed apology and a stream-of-conscious string of expletives. Then Will is mounting him, all the way in with one enthusiastic push and plaintive moan. Hannibal’s given little time to adjust to the intrusion, but Will’s impossibly wet and Hannibal’s improbably lax. Will’s biology has primed him so thoroughly that Hannibal’s only real grief is that Will isn’t fucking him already.

Then, as if divining his thoughts, Will starts driving into him, curled over Hannibal’s bowed torso and pumping his hips with possessive abandon, exhaling bestial grunts between the obscene clap of their bodies and Hannibal’s own somewhat more reserved gasps. Carnal noise juxtaposed to the sinuous oscillation of damp torsos.

Some _de novo_ part of Hannibal’s hind brain has shanghaied his higher function. Hannibal is not opposed to taking risks, but this is pushing it. Will has already proven that his anatomy is unpredictable, and it’s probably the least sensible thing to do to let Will ride him without protection. But he’s overwrought with sensation. Suffused with Will’s heady ecstasy, Will’s headlong race to the finish. All Hannibal wants to do is lock his legs around him and draw him in close as he starts to climax. And he does just that, arching up and howling through his fingers as he comes.

He’s distantly aware of Will’s surprised yelp and abrupt stillness. Very acutely aware of the sudden swell of pressure against his oversensitive prostate. He reflexively tries to bring his knees together and dislodge him, but Will hisses and grabs onto his hips.

“Can’t,” Will warns him.

The sound of their labored breathing. Will’s soft moan above him.

“ _Not yet,_ ” Will urges, pressing close to relieve the strain on his cock where they’re interlocked. “You-feel-so-good, _I’m—it’s—”_

There’s a pulse of discomfort as something passes between them, from Will and into Hannibal. He feels the stretch of it, the hot deluge of fluid that eases its way inside. Will chokes out a guttural cry of relief and slumps, breath clipped by the exertion of what’s just transpired. Hannibal, too, feels some inexplicable satiation, underscored by abject horror. Unable to move until Will can withdraw, he’s little choice but to lie limply on the floor, riding a tide of endorphins and waiting for his body to, hopefully, metabolize whatever Will had injected into it.

He doesn’t know how long they lie there. He drifts, a hand stroking his side and a mouth at his ear, murmuring.

Hannibal doesn’t dream.

 

* * *

 

His mind is a mire, and it’s slow work slogging his way back to wakefulness. Will’s still reeling from his dream. What he’d thought was a dream until he opens his eyes and finds himself in an undignified sprawl atop the object of his affections. And surrounded by irrefutable evidence that they had...

Will props himself up on his elbows and gapes.

Oh, god.

Oh. _God._

No wonder his body aches. Moreover, the wrenching pain in his gut is miraculously and wholly absent. He tries not to correlate it. Tries, but some base instinct prompts him to dip his head low and press an investigatory nose to Hannibal’s abdomen, silver hair tickling his face as he _breathes._

There it is. He can smell it. Growing, changing. Assimilating.

Even now, Will can sense the man’s presence in the back of his conscious, like a diminutive candle lit and licking at the inside of his skull, growing in strength as sleep recedes.

Will bites his lip and rests his forehead on Hannibal’s chest, tears brimming. He’s fucked up, royally, but for the first time in his life, he doesn’t feel alone—and that, more than anything, makes his heart sink with guilt. He’s went and dug his heels right into the fabric of this other man’s very being. He’s playing a game he doesn’t even know the rules for.

Hannibal is going to wake up and never belong to himself again. Hannibal is going to wake up and know, just _know_ , that he’s Will’s, and Will doesn’t even have it in him to feel genuine remorse because he’s so goddamn happy, and he can’t help it.

When Hannibal begins to rouse, Will holds his breath. Waits, exhilarated.

Terrified.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Sometimes I art, too. Visit me over on [tumblr](http://thenecronon.tumblr.com/).


End file.
